GDPBZN Dispatch & Operations Platform

A web-based dispatch and operations management system for a fire and emergency response unit (ГДПБЗН — Главна дирекция "Пожарна безопасност и защита на населението"), built with Flask. It covers incident intake and tracking, crew and vehicle management, task assignment, shift scheduling, leave requests, and real-time in-incident chat with SOS alerting.

Built as a university practicum (praktika) project.

Features

• Incident management — log incidents with type/priority/status, GPS location, hazard notes, and an action plan; assign a crew and vehicle; track the full timeline (reported → dispatched → on scene → resolved).
• Task management — create and edit tasks tied to an incident, assign them to a crew, and track status (pending / accepted / in progress / completed / cancelled).
• Crew & vehicle management — organize firefighters into crews, add/remove members, and track vehicle status (available / deployed / maintenance / retired).
• Shift scheduling — start and end shifts, pairing a crew with a vehicle.
• Leave requests — firefighters can request leave; ops/admin can approve or deny.
• Real-time chat — a per-incident chat channel (via Flask-SocketIO) for coordinating with a crew on scene, including image uploads.
• SOS alerts — a persistent SOS button for firefighters in the field, with an alert history and live acknowledgement flow for the operations center.
• Live operations map — real-time crew and vehicle positions via a JSON API, for dispatch/command visibility.
• Mobile dashboard — a lightweight, mobile-first view for firefighters showing their active assignments and tasks.
• Role-based access control — Admin, Operations Center, Dispatcher, and Firefighter roles, each with different permissions.
• Admin panel — manage user accounts and roles.

Tech Stack

• Backend: Python, Flask, Flask-SQLAlchemy, Flask-Migrate (Alembic), Flask-Login, Flask-WTF, Flask-SocketIO
• Database: SQLite (dev), via SQLAlchemy ORM
• Real-time: Flask-SocketIO / python-socketio
• Frontend: Jinja2 templates, Bootstrap-based UI, vanilla JS (including a GPS tracker script for the mobile view)
• Testing: pytest, pytest-flask

Project Structure

backend/
├── app/
│   ├── blueprints/        # Feature modules: auth, incidents, tasks, crews,
│   │                      #   vehicles, shifts, leave, operations, chat, admin
│   ├── models/             # SQLAlchemy models (User, Crew, Vehicle, Incident,
│   │                       #   Task, Message, SOSAlert, LeaveRequest, ...)
│   ├── static/              # CSS, JS (incl. gps_tracker.js), uploaded chat images
│   ├── templates/           # Jinja2 templates, organized per blueprint
│   ├── utils/                # Role-based decorators, message templates
│   └── socket_events.py       # SocketIO event handlers
├── migrations/                # Alembic database migrations
├── tests/                     # pytest test suite
├── config.py                  # App configuration (dev/prod)
├── run.py                      # Application entry point
└── seed.py                     # Wipes and repopulates the DB with demo data

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+ (developed against 3.14)
• pip

Setup

# 1. Clone the repository
git clone <repo-url>
cd praktika/backend

# 2. Create and activate a virtual environment
python -m venv .venv
# Windows:
.venv\Scripts\activate
# macOS/Linux:
source .venv/bin/activate

# 3. Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# 4. Configure environment variables
# Create a .env file in backend/ (see "Environment Variables" below)

# 5. Set up the database
flask db upgrade
# — or, for a quick start with realistic sample data instead —
python seed.py

Environment Variables

Create a backend/.env file with:

FLASK_APP=run.py
FLASK_ENV=development
FLASK_DEBUG=1
SECRET_KEY=replace-this-with-a-real-secret-key
DATABASE_URL=sqlite:///gdpbzn.db

Running the App

python run.py

The app runs at http://localhost:5000. Note: the app uses SocketIO for real-time chat and SOS alerts — always start it with python run.py (which calls socketio.run()), not flask run.

Demo / Seed Data

seed.py drops and recreates all tables, then populates the database with a full showcase dataset — sample users, crews, vehicles, incidents at every stage, tasks, chat messages, and an active SOS alert.

Demo accounts created by the seed script (password shown per role):

Username	Password	Role
admin	admin1234	Admin
ops1	ops11234	Operations Center
dispatcher1	disp1234	Dispatcher
ff1–ff7	fire1234	Firefighter